Denial by Jon Raymond

Published by Simon & Schuster on July 26, 2022

What an interesting and unpredictable story Denial tells. The novel takes place about 30 years in the future. A climate catastrophe brought people and nations together. They placed 33 corporate executives on trial for profiting from the planet’s destruction. Eight of the executives fled before trial, making new lives with new identities. They were tried in absentia.

Jack Henry, a reporter, tells the story from his first-person perspective. A friend tells Jack that he saw Robert Cave in a museum coffee shop in Guadalajara. Cave was one of the defendants convicted in absentia. Outing him would be a big scoop. Henry hopes to find him, confirm his identity, and then confront him on camera, a confrontation he calls “the Donaldson” after a technique perfected by Sam Donaldson.

Jack stakes out the coffee shop. He reads Huckleberry Finn to pass the time. After a few days, Cave enters the shop. Jake gets behind him in line, hoping to strike up a conversation so he can record the man’s voice. Cave notices Jake’s book and pulls out a copy of Tom Sawyer. They bond over books, the old-fashioned kind made out of paper. Cave seems eager for American company. Jack spins a cover story before he leaves. After another “coincidental” meeting in the coffee shop, the two men appear to be working toward a friendship.

Jack’s editor reviews the recordings and surreptitious videos. She confirms Cave’s true identity. To Jack and likely to the reader, Cave seems like a decent man. Unless he is putting on an act, he has accepted that climate change caused a crisis and that profit-seeking corporations were largely responsible for it. The novel suggests that people are capable of changing and encourages the reader to wonder about the fairness of taking freedom away from a man who is living a new and harmless life. A cameraman notes that other people who have faced the Donaldson also turned out to be friendly, likeable people. The same can be said of most criminals — we often like the ones we know and despise the ones we never meet. At the same time, Cave avoided the punishment that was imposed on the other executives, and it isn’t fair to let him escape responsibility for his actions.

This might be the stuff of a dramatic moment as Jack decides whether to ruin Cave’s life, but Jon Raymond eschews obvious drama to tell a smaller story. Denial does not explore climate change in any depth. Nor does it explore the wisdom of placing a few corporate executives on trial, although it recognizes that culpability extends far beyond those executives. Every person who chooses not to reduce a carbon footprint, every politician who votes against clean energy, every sham scientist and TV talking head who denies global warming shares fault for the destruction that climate change is already causing.

The story builds tension indirectly. Jack’s relationship with his girlfriend seems troubled when he brings her to Mexico to witness a solar eclipse. Jack becomes ill during that quick vacation, perhaps too ill to execute the Donaldson. The real drama comes from Cave when he realizes that his new life might be coming to an end. Raymond doesn’t overplay the scene. Cave’s reaction is surprising for its understatement. It seems all the more real and sad for its lack of drama.

Perhaps Denial could have been a bigger, more powerful book, but it isn’t fair to criticize an author for not writing a different book. Denial tells a simple, very personal story. I enjoyed it for what it is, even if it could have been more.

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